There might not have been a worse team in pro sports history than the 1974-75 Washington Capitals, an expansion NHL squad that went 8-67-5. I remember the team only because an older friend I had, a Dartmouth student named Jack Fidler whom I befriended as a 10-year-old and hung out with a lot, became a devotee of the Caps even though he was a big Boston fan in everything else. Jack would wear his Capitals ski hat everywhere and painstakingly listen to every game on the radio, as kind of his homage to a horrible train wreck in progress.

Anyway, these ain’t the same Caps anymore. It was a Cap Crunch at the Can tonight, a 6-1 spankin’ of the baby-blue Avs (think they don’t like playing in those blueberry getups much? That wasn’t even their worst home loss in them so far. The worse was the 8-2 shellacking to the Canucks).

Listen, I’m not going to just rip the whole team tonight and call for everybody’s head. The lads lost to a fine team tonight. It’s going to happen. They’re still in first place and they’ve played an awful lot of hockey lately.

I will throw David Koci in the under the bus a bit, though, for his freight train hit on Mike Green, which will definitely draw a suspension. The only question is, for how many games? Koci never let up in coming hard all the way from the left circle to behind the net, where Green was playing a puck with his back to Koci’s charge. Granted, Green was a little casual with the puck, had his head down some and part of hockey is knowing who’s on the ice and acting accordingly.

But it was still an inexcusable cheap shot by Koci, and all it did was sink morale of his teammates. When a player makes a big cheap shot, it always kills any buzz in the building and always seems to deflate the rest of the team. Koci, I thought, started the season well, playing a good, honest, forechecking game and fighting with honor. But that hit tonight is going to set his reputation back a lot now, and he’s barely been playing lately anyway. You have to wonder what value he’s giving Joe Sacco right now.

The other guy who deserves to be ripped is John Liles, who was just really bad tonight and has been for a while really. I never take pleasure in ripping a good guy – and Liles is – but this is the big time, and this is a guy making $4 million a year whom the Avs really depend on. When this is what you get – bad cross-ice passes and dithering with the puck on the power play -then you have to call him on it. I’m just not sure what’s gotten into Liles, but he’s not playing well. He had a great start to the season, but it just seems sometimes that in these kinds of games tonight, he gets exposed for his mistakes in a hurry. He hasn’t scored a goal in 18 straight games. If he’s not scoring, he needs to make sure he takes care of the puck defensively, at least, and that obviously didn’t happen tonight.

I don’t have any video of my own tonight, but erstwhile Post online producer Dan “Don’t call me Tom” Petty took lots and lots and it’ll be all over the site at denverpost.com soon. You’ll want to check out the video chat with Mike Keane, especially when he shows off the 1996 Stanley Cup ring with the Avs.

The other thing about tonight: Jose Theodore gets the easy win against the team that let him go just last year. Theodore has struggled somewhat at times in Washington, but the guy has a 41-21-9 record with Washington since leaving over a difference of $1 million per year on a two-year offer. The Caps offered two years for $9 million and the Avs would only go to $7 million.

Yeah, I know Jose’s GAA and SP haven’t been great this year or at times last year, but the record is what it is and, sorry, I’m a Jose guy. At least, I was in the situation he was in here, where he was sharing net duties with Peter Budaj. Some guys were Boods guys, and I was a Jose guy.

To me, the Avs made the wrong decision not ponying up a little more money, and we saw what kind of goaltending the Avs got last year without him. Now the Avs have Anderson, and despite tonight’s stinker, he’ll be a solid goalie going forward. So, in a way, the Avs lucked out.

Theodore has always endured a lot in recent years. He’s got some, well, interesting other family members that have caused him some stress. But that was nothing compared to losing his two-month-old boy before the season, to a respiratory illness. How awful, and anybody who goes through that gets a pass from me. But he’s managed to still forge on, and played a good game tonight.

Remember that kick save on Chris Stewart, when it was still just a 1-0 game in the first period? If Stewie puts that in, maybe it’s a whole new, other kind of game.

Another observation from tonight, helped along with the benefit of watching the NHL Network’s increasingly improving “On the Fly” program afterward, with Dave Reid and Kevin Weekes analyzing the night’s games: Matt Duchene still needs to do some work with his defensive game. On Washington’s first goal, Duchene lost his man in a scrum along the right boards. That man, Tomas Fleischmann, went to the net and put home his own rebound, while Duchene lagged from behind. He also made a bad decision that led to Washington’s third goal: instead of going forehand around the net and up the opposite boards with a left-handed clear attempt, Duchene decided to go backhand up the short side with the puck. It was intercepted and quickly led to a Caps goal in front.

Terry Frei graduated from Wheat Ridge High School in the Denver area and has degrees in history and journalism from the University of Colorado-Boulder. He worked for the Rocky Mountain News while attending CU and joined the Post staff after graduation. He has also worked at the Oregonian in Portland, Ore., and The Sporting News. His seventh book, March 1939: Before the Madness, was issued in February 2014.

Chambers covers college and professional hockey for The Denver Post. He has written for the Post since 1994, after dumping his first 9-to-5 office job a couple years out of college. He primarily follows the University of Denver hockey team and helps cover the Avalanche.